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Blog Post: Lazy Users Are Actually Efficient

Having orchestrated many user testing exercises, I have lots of experience with user laziness. It is a term in the product world that refers to users skipping all of the precious copy and walk-throughs engineered with love. With such well-written copy and care given to every interaction users have with our products it’s understandable to get upset watching someone skip over all of that and just get to the meat of a design.

I can’t tell you how valuable that kind of information is.

Often, we get so concerned with designing a product “right” that we overlook the obvious. This blog post from UX consultant Harry Brignull perfectly illustrates just how unnecessary some product decisions are:

If you tell it to work out 200 factorial minus 200 factorial, it will do a lot of unnecessary computation, and perhaps produce an overflow error. The intelligent solution is a far more lazy one.

That means the many screens describing what your app does may be a waste of time to users. They can figure it out on their own. Instead of utilizing an account creation module with four or five screens, just add a Facebook login button. The data you get will be the same and users will be happy they didn’t waste a few minutes for an app they might not like in a few weeks.

Examples span every industry and product alike. Instead of seeing users as lazy, we must take the data they give us and streamline the experience of our products. When we have an efficient method of giving users what they want, they appreciate it and come back for more.

My name is Chris Murman, thanks for visiting my space.
As an IT consultant, I am constantly in search of ways to make the work we do better. This means bringing a lean focus to the products we make, a holistic approach to agile business processes, or an intense focus on the technologies of tomorrow.
This blog is a collection of all thoughts related to those, and many more endeavors. Come participate in the conversation with me!